114 HW. A. Howorth—Traces of a Great Post-Glacial Flood. 
that if Sir Charles Lyell’s calculations are of any value, they under- 
state the problem, for many of the shells found in these beds are not 
littoral, but deep-water shells, and the land must not only have sunk 
to the level of the sea, but much below, to render it a fit habitat for 
them. We are to believe, then, that a whole continent, which was 
submerged for ages in this way, has nothing left to show the fact 
save these shreds left at different levels and always near the present 
coast-lines. In regard to the differing levels at which they occur, 
my acute friend, Mr. Darbishire, well says :— 
“It is difficult to conceive of the deposit of a continuous bed of 
shingle, 600 feet deep, with precisely similar fossils in its highest 
and lowest layers, and of the removal of the whole of the formation, 
except a few patches of each layer lying within a space of 6 miles, 
It is more difficult to suppose that the cemetery beds (i.e. the beds 
at a lower level) can be a redistribution of such portions of Mr. 
Prestwich’s gravel as the wave of a retreating sea carried away 
while the land was rising. It is scarcely more easy to believe that 
the cemetery beds and those of the higher land are merely portions 
of a deposit under similar conditions on a rising coast, the incline 
being not less than 600 feet in 6 miles” (Mems. Mane. Lit. and Phil. 
Soc., 8rd series, vol. iii. pp. 65 and 66). 
Where, we may ask,,if the current theory of submergence is to be 
accepted, are the continuous beaches that mark a rising coast, such 
as exist in Spitzbergen and elsewhere? Not a detached girdle 
like the 25-feet beach, but traces of sea-beaches up to 2000 feet above 
the sea-level ? After I wrote this sentence I found that Mr. Jamieson, 
who will be everywhere accepted asa very learned and high authority 
upon the Glacial beds, had published similar remarks. but much 
nore forcibly put, in a paper on the last stage of the Glacial period 
in North Britain, which I venture to quote. Speaking of the theory 
which postulates no disturbing influences, save subaerial ones, 
since the supposed great submergence, he says :—‘‘ In such a case I 
should expect to find level sheets of gravel, sand, and silt, containing 
some remains of marine fossils in a more or less perfect state; also, 
zones of beach pebbles mixed with some littoral shells, and deposits 
of a similar nature capping eminences that had been in shoal-water ; 
and in particular I should look for traces of estuary mud along tlie 
curves of the wider valleys, where the tide and the river had formerly 
met. Now, in Scotland, so far as I am aware, we have absolutely 
no trace of any such estuary beds containing remains of animals 
peculiar to places of the sort, except at levels below 30 feet, and 
which belong, as I have elsewhere shown, to a more recent period, 
when glacial conditions had passed away, the shells indicating a 
climate rather warmer than at present. How could the glacial sca 
have gradually retired, or, rather, how could the land have gradually 
emerged, without some tidal sediment being left here and there along the 
valleys where a pause in the change of level took place? It is true some 
have thought they have discovered traces of ancient sea-margins in 
certain more or less horizontal banks and terraces, which, however, 
admit of a different explanation; but no one, so far as I remember, 
